Linklist: March 23, 2025
most recommended: 1, 4, 6, 9, 10
links (links with excerpts below):
Censor, purge, defund: how Trump is following the authoritarian playbook on science and universities
Why does science ask the question of artificial consciousness?
Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the Roots of Frank Herbert’s Dune (2021)
Abandoning research participants is an unconscionable betrayal
links with excerpts:
"Further, we found that the difference in male and female students’ access to campus translates into a difference in how men and women interact amongst themselves, and with each other. Several women lamented the absence of the ‘hostel spirit’ – a sense of bonhomie – among residents of the women’s hostels while the same appeared to be prevalent amongst residents of the men’s hostels. They told us that men—with greater spaces and mobility at their disposal—cultivate much more of this collective enthusiasm.
There are more men in any given batch (~80%). This, combined with their greater access to the campus space, means that they prefer to group for academic exercises within themselves. According to Madhura, a female B.Tech student, “Boys will definitely want to collaborate…amongst themselves because it’s easier to…travel amongst their hostels. They’re all nearby, and they have this notion that [women] will be a liability to the team itself.”
We also found that the unhindered access for men and proximity of the men’s hostels to the SAC – a prominent site for student interaction – also translates into stronger relationships with senior (male) students. These relationships transcend their time at IIT and evolve into long-standing mentor-mentee equations."
"We have left the age where “machines” were easy to delineate because we were so limited in our understanding of the tools that can be used to understand and make machines (it turns out, some of the same tools behavioral scientists and biologists have been using for a long time, such as manipulating memories, beliefs, attention and the autonomous alignment of parts toward system-level goals). We must give up the comforting notion that we understand matter well enough to say that the limits of our models are equivalent to the limits of the “non-living” world.
We believe we understand machines and inanimate materials. Most people, upon finding computer chips and wires under their skin, would be upset; in fact, many who support LTNM would feel they had been robbed of their essential, ineffable quality. But why not conclude, instead, that apparently computer chips and wires can give rise to the rich inner life, freedom and responsibility we know we enjoy? Instead, this is taken as a massively disruptive fact about their own existence because of a story told to us since childhood about how wet chemicals are the only things that enable true minds. In this ingrained “reality,” people will denigrate “machines” in every context, even if it means denying their own reality.
This misplaced confidence in our models of the nonliving world is an incredibly effective piece of propaganda; the reductionist physicalist worldview is pretty universal. Even many religious people seem 100% committed to biochemistry as the only substrate that can do the trick even though no one has a convincing story for why robots cannot become ensouled, and escape the limitations of their material, as biochemical embryos do."
🇺🇸 Censor, purge, defund: how Trump is following the authoritarian playbook on science and universities
"In this post, I will use academic evidence on authoritarian regimes to dig into why science and universities are threats to autocracies and how the Trump administration is using tried and tested methods for their attacks. There are also methods used elsewhere (e.g. Hungary, Turkey, Iran, China, Russia) which the Trump administration is not yet using - and which we need to watch out for over the coming months."
"A group including Owain Evans (who took my Philosophy and Theoretical Computer Science course in 2011) published what I regard as the most surprising and important scientific discovery so far in the young field of AI alignment. (See also Zvi’s commentary.) Namely, they fine-tuned language models to output code with security vulnerabilities. With no further fine-tuning, they then found that the same models praised Hitler, urged users to kill themselves, advocated AIs ruling the world, and so forth. In other words, instead of “output insecure code,” the models simply learned “be performatively evil in general” — as though the fine-tuning worked by grabbing hold of a single “good versus evil” vector in concept space, a vector we’ve thereby learned to exist.
(“Of course AI models would do that,” people will inevitably say. Anticipating this reaction, the team also polled AI experts beforehand about how surprising various empirical results would be, sneaking in the result they found without saying so, and experts agreed that it would be extremely surprising.)"
"If you ask environmentalists about artificial intelligence, they will likely say its biggest drawback involves energy use. One AI research company estimates that querying a service like ChatGPT or Google AI uses 30 times as much energy as a conventional Google search. Energy use is not the only environmental component of AI. Cooling the large data centers that house these AI tools requires enormous amounts of water, an increasingly scarce resource in many parts of the United States. One large data center can suck up the same amount of water per day as a small town. Others have pointed out that AI chatbots can spread misinformation about the climate crisis.
Many environmentalists have argued that AI should be significantly curtailed for these reasons. Perhaps unexpectedly, Earth scientists—researchers who study the environment to make life-saving discoveries—have found themselves at odds with this group of natural allies.
Whether it be for weather forecasting or earthquake detection, Earth scientists argue that AI—particularly machine learning, which is an AI technique that autonomously pulls insights from pools of data—is the most energy-efficient and fastest way to make new breakthroughs. “Traditional” weather forecasters and other researchers have exclusively used computers to solve equations that past scientists would have had to solve by hand. But even if a computer does these calculations much faster than a person, it still takes energy, and a lot of it. AI models for Earth science use pattern recognition and other inference tools to produce results, instead of explicitly solving equations, which brings down energy costs. But even for this application, AI, like any new technology, is not a perfect solution."
"Birch and Andrews propose a thought experiment in which a robot rat behaves exactly like a real rat. It passes the same cognitive and behavioral tests. They further assume that the rat brain is accurately depicted in the robot, neuron for neuron. In such a case, they argue, it would be inconsistent not to accept the same pain markers that apply to the rat for the robot as well. The cases are similar, they argue, the transition from carbon to silicon does not provide sufficient reason to doubt that the robot rat can feel pain when it exhibits the same features that mark pain in the real rat. But the cases are not similar, Kathinka Evers points out, because the real rat, unlike the robot, is alive. If life is essential for consciousness, then it is not inconsistent to doubt that the robot can feel pain even in this thought experiment. Someone could of course associate life with consciousness and argue that a robot rat that exhibits the essential features of consciousness must also be considered alive. But if the purpose is to identify what can logically serve as evidence for conscious AI, the problem remains, says Kathinka Evers, because we then need to clarify how the relationship between life and consciousness should be investigated and how the concepts should be defined.
Kathinka Evers thus suggests several questions of relevance to what can logically be considered evidence for conscious AI. But she also asks a more fundamental question, which can be sensed throughout her commentary. She asks why the question of artificial consciousness is even being raised in science today. As mentioned, one of Birch and Andrews’ aims was to avoid the answer being influenced by psychological tendencies to interpret an AI that convincingly reflects human emotions as if it were conscious. But Kathinka Evers asks, as I read her, whether this logical purpose may not come too late. Is not the question already a temptation? AI is trained on human-generated data to reflect human behavior, she points out. Are we perhaps seeking philosophical and scientific evidence regarding a question that seems significant simply because we have a psychological tendency to identify with our digital mirror images? For a question to be considered scientific and worth funding, some kind of initial empirical support is usually required, but there is no evidence whatsoever for the possibility of consciousness in non-living entities such as AI systems. The question of whether an AI can be conscious has no more empirical support than the question of whether volcanoes can experience their eruptions, Kathinka Evers points out. There is a great risk that we will scientifically try to answer a question that lacks scientific basis. No matter how carefully we seek the longed-for answer, the question itself seems imprudent."
"The overall characterization of the Fremen may be considered an overly romantic vision of Arab Bedouin society: long, flowing robes and dark or tanned skin; the practice of polygamy; values such as honor, trust, and bravery; and tribes that live primitive and simple lives in response to a brutal environment. [Zaki, p 183]
The representation of desert peoples through the Atreides’ eyes does rely on some romanticized notions. However, it can be seen as relying on fewer negative stereotypes than the depiction of the Arabs in Lawrence’s book.
In the Atreides’ view, the Fremen appear at first to be a suspicious and cautious people, willing to see if they can work with the Atreides or if they will need to consider them hostile like the Harkonnen. In the meantime, the Fremen helpfully provide solid intelligence and gifts of value such as stillsuits. Following his father, Paul accepts the view that the Fremen could be the allies and ‘desert power’ that they need. He thus has a clear incentive to look upon them favorably, just as Lawrence does.
When he sees the Fremen Stilgar for the first time, he feels the leader’s commanding presence: “A tall, robed figure stood in the door…A light tan robe completely enveloped the man except for a gap in the hood and black veil that exposed eyes of total blue—no white in them at all…In the waiting silence, Paul studied the man, sensing the aura of power that radiated from him. He was a leader—a Fremen leader.” [Herbert, p 92] Stilgar brings with him a sense of authority that all recognize. This aligns with how Lawrence describes Feisal—with a sense of destiny: “I felt at first glance that this was the man I had come to Arabia to seek – the leader who would bring the Arab Revolt to full glory. Feisal looked very tall and pillar-like, very slender, in his long white silk robes and his brown head-cloth bound with a brilliant scarlet and gold cord.” [Lawrence, p 92]"
"Even for those who aren’t consciously aware of its visual appeal, lowercase writing often feels instinctively right. “I think I’ve kept using lowercase out of habit,” says Kouman. “But when I look back, it started because everyone in my school group chat did it, and I guess after a while it felt normal.”
Many young people, however, switch back to uppercase in professional or academic settings, where formality still holds weight. “I actively choose to text using capital letters when I know I’m speaking to work colleagues,” says Nardos Petros, 23. “It’s about presenting myself in a certain way.”
Some have even adopted capitalisation as a humorous marker of adulthood. Kouman points to a trend on TikTok where young adults announce they’ve turned their auto-capitalisation back on as a sign of maturity."
"“For example,” she said, “bees make time together as a hive.” Honeybees have a social clock determined by the division of labor. Nurse bees, who remain in the hive to care for the brood, keep to a consistent rhythm that ticks away in their genes, whereas foraging bees manage a complex relationship between circadian rhythms, an oscillating clock gene, and what Barbara called “flower time,” the separate chronotype of the plants to which the bees are drawn. Making time is a complicated negotiation between species.
And wild clocks don’t tick with the steady pulse of a Swiss watch, they swing. Assembled together, they form a vast polyrhythmic score, an impossibly complex arrangement of syncopated beats and pulses, tempo layered upon tempo, in a rich, immersive cross-rhythm that drives life forwards day by day, year by year, season to season.
Time lives in the body, not as the tick of the clock, but as a pulse in the blood. It is a thought, buried deep in nerve, leaf, and gene. It is also a social contract, one we adjust according to different needs, whether for daylight saving or simply setting a watch five minutes fast to avoid being late. Yet, as philosopher Michelle Bastian has recognized, our habitual ways of telling time have their limits. “While the clock can tell me whether I am late for work,” she writes, “it cannot tell me whether it is too late to mitigate runaway climate change.” She suggests that, as our usual ways of telling the time flounder, perhaps other living things might become our “time-givers” instead. As wild clocks fall out of measure, can we recalibrate our sense of time and foster a rhythm by which all life can flourish?"
"The origins of many technologies have a somewhat spiritual dimension, and so it is with the Vermont-born industrialist Robert G. LeTourneau, who had the greatest impact on the development of the bulldozer. LeTourneau was an eccentric evangelical Christian who believed that he created his machines in collaboration with God. “God,” he declared, “is the chairman of my board.” A gifted engineer, he was responsible for hundreds of innovative advances in bulldozer design. Thanks to his ideas, wrote William R. Haycraft in “Yellow Steel,” “[T]he bulldozer blade would evolve from a simple plate of flat steel to the hydraulically controlled, scientifically curved, box-section-reinforced, and heat-treated steel structure in use today.”
LeTourneau wore trilby hats and flew up and down the country in a private plane — clocking, according to TIME, around 200,000 air miles per year. He sought to spread the word of the Lord Almighty and the bulldozer in tandem, and would sometimes fly with a quartet of professional singers so they could deliver gospel performances in the communities he visited. His bulldozers aided in the frenetic transformation of the 20th-century American landscape and were deployed to major construction sites all over the country, from the Boulder Highway to the Hoover Dam, helping to create the infrastructure that modern life has come to depend on.
In 1952, before a shipment of LeTourneau equipment left the docks of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the direction of West Africa, Reverend Billy Graham — one of 20th-century America’s most influential pastors — said a prayer and blessed the machines. The locals called the ship “The Ark of LeTourneau”; it carried $500,000 worth of earthmoving machinery, a year’s worth of food and 500 copies of the New Testament. LeTourneau flew ahead on his plane and waited on a wild and sandy beach at Bafu Bay, Liberia, for his ark to appear on the horizon."
"Thirdly, we must not fall into the trap that this behaviour can be countered by rational argument. Commentators invest enormous effort in trying to interpret Trump’s vague and capricious words and to decide whether he means what he says, knowing he can change his mind within hours.11 It is futile pointing out that the attack on American science will damage the prosperity or reputation of the United States. There is not a scintilla of evidence that Trump or Elon Musk, his effective co-president, care. Nor is it useful to appeal to their humanity, given that their entire approach is characterised by performative cruelty.12 Rather, one should look to the literature on denialism for ideas about how to respond, focusing on the motivations and tactics of one’s opponents rather than the content of their arguments.13
Fourth, at least for now the United States is a country under the rule of law. Many of Trump’s executive orders are illegal or even, as with his order to remove citizenship of those born in the United States, unconstitutional.14 While Trump’s use of “shock and awe” has, at least initially, dazed and disoriented the academic community, there is a growing number of successful legal challenges.15 It is already becoming clear that Attorneys General in Democrat-run states are creating a nucleus of opposition.16 Of course, questions remain as to whether these court orders will be obeyed.17
Fifth, universities, learned societies, and similar organisations must avoid anticipative compliance. There have already been some shameful examples of self-censorship, including writing women and people of colour out of their history.18 Equally, those who are violating these ethical norms should have no place in the scientific community. Why has the UK’s Royal Society not rescinded Elon Musk’s honorary fellowship?19"